pillar-cloud moves also. Thus all will be well. All will be blessing on God's part and praise on yours.

This wondrous life of mine

Thou gavest me:

In every step of it

What love I see !

Constant, compassionating care,

Thy love, my Heavenly Father, there.

Each step has not been smooth;

Trials have lent

Their gloom and shadows deep;
But all were sent

To bring me nearer, Lord, to Thee-
Thy tenderness in all the way I see.

And now at Thy dear feet

Once more I fall,

To give Thee, Lord, my life—

Yes, take it all!

It has been thine for many a year

Yet not, my Father, wholly thine, I fear.

The world, its cares and joys,

Within my heart

Have had too dear a home,

Too large a part;

But now let nothing have a share

Create Thyself a perfect temple there!

Oh! Jesus, let Thy life

In my life live ;—

A consecrated heart,

My Master give!

In life, in death, let this my glory be: I am my Lord's for all eternity!

III.

THE PASSOVER.

EXOD. xii. 1-14.

ONE of the most striking events in the history of Israel is recorded in the chapter before us. Their history as a nation, their continuance as the peculiar people of God, their final glorious restoration and national prosperity, are all linked with it. The Passover was to them in a temporal point of view precisely what it is to us in a spiritual. It is that which distinguishes the Jew from the heathen world around. It is that also which distinguishes the Christian. The Jew had no name, no history, no peculiarity, no story to tell to coming ages apart from the Passover. He was part and parcel of a world lying in idolatry and sin. His connection with the Paschal lamb lifts him up, gives him a name and a history that will last till time shall be no longer. So is it with the Christian.

He has no name, no history, no story to tell to coming ages apart from his connection with the Lamb of God. Severed from Him he is part of a world lying in the wicked one— dead in trespasses and sins. It is his connection with Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, that distinguishes him, exalts him, gives him a place in the records of eternity that angels admire and gaze upon with wonder. He is no longer the drop lost in the vast ocean but the drop drawn out by the sunbeam, and reflecting all the varied hues and tints of the glorious

sun.

Familiar as we may be with this precious portion of Scripture, reflecting, in type, all the glorious features of redemption through the blood of the Lamb, there are points in it which cannot be too prominently or too frequently brought before those who are not fully established in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us look at it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and clasp its hidden gems to our hearts with increased thankfulness and praise for such a Saviour and such a salvation.

Let us notice the chief subject brought under our notice before entering minutely into the narrative. It is salvation by blood. It is the echo of the gospel dispensation "Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins." It is blood, and blood only, that saves the soul.

When we see so many endeavouring to ignore this truth we have need more than ever to dwell upon it. Not the fact of a man being an accredited minister of Christ, presenting the Saviour before men in the most attractive garb, setting forward His love and meekness and forbearance in language calculated to rivet the attention and draw forth the admiration of listening thousands, should ever make us acquiesce in his soul-destroying error of ignoring salvation through the blood of Jesus. Yet are there many such just now in the Church; men who not only give forth such utterances as that "the Bible is not the Word of God but only contains it," and that the punishment of the wicked hereafter is not eternal, but who covertly convey to their listening audiences the equally erroneous doctrine that it is the love of Christ which saves the sinner, of which the shedding of the blood was only the evidence. With such men, both in their preaching and in their writing, the love of Christ is everything, while the blood of Christ is ignored. Jesus is set forth in such exquisite attractiveness as a suffering Saviour-His love pervading every line and utterance of the speaker or writer, His blessed example so conspicuously held up for our imitation and guidance, and all this in language so elegant and eloquent that multitudes of unsuspecting Christians are carried away. It is much to be feared that in the preaching of modern